MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Disgraced Australian Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to six years in jail for child sex crimes in a Melbourne court Wednesday, with a minimum period of three years and eight months to be served.
Chief Justice Peter Kidd told the County Count of Victoria that he had weighed Pell’s “appalling offending” as well as his advanced age — 77 — and that he had led an “otherwise blameless life” in setting the sentence.
Pell faced a maximum 50 years in prison for five charges of abusing two choirboys in the late 1990s.
© Agence France-Presse
